36.3617, Calls: Multimodal Communication - "Special issue: Beyond the Binary: Memes, Emojis, GIFs, Stickers, and Multimodal Creativity in Human–AI Digital Interaction" (Jrnl)

Tue Nov 25 15:05:02 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3617. Tue Nov 25 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3617, Calls: Multimodal Communication - "Special issue: Beyond the Binary: Memes, Emojis, GIFs, Stickers, and Multimodal Creativity in Human–AI Digital Interaction" (Jrnl)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Mara Baccaro, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Valeriia Vyshnevetska <valeriia at linguistlist.org>

================================================================

Date: 16-Nov-2025
From: Najma Al Zidjaly [najmaz at gmail.com]
Subject: Multimodal Communication - "Special Issue: Beyond the Binary: Memes, Emojis, GIFs, Stickers, and Multimodal Creativity in Human–AI Digital Interaction" (Jrnl)

Journal: Multimodal Communication
Issue: Beyond the Binary: Memes, Emojis, GIFs, Stickers, and
Multimodal Creativity in Human–AI Digital Interaction

Theme and Rationale:
In everyday digital communication across cultures, users continually
navigate—and often resist—deeply embedded binary structures, whether
political, social, or gendered. These binaries shape meaning at all
levels of interaction, from grammatical gender to socially constructed
categories of membership. Yet digital users frequently turn to
image-based resources—memes, emojis, GIFs, stickers, and related
multimodal forms (MEGS)—to challenge, complicate, or subvert these
imposed dichotomies.
Research has increasingly recognized the complex social and pragmatic
work carried out by MEGS. While often associated with playfulness,
these resources also perform significant relational, political, and
cultural functions, including dissent (Al Zidjaly 2017; Denisova
2018), gendered role construction (Graham 2019), subverting authority
(Zhang et al. 2019), acting as public signs (Al Zidjaly & Al Barhi
2022), mapping cultures (Abdullah 2021; Dynel & Thomas 2020),
responding to daily events (Ahmadi et al. 2020), and communicating
during crises such as COVID-19 (Anapol 2020; Dynel 2020). Their role
in phatic communication has also received sustained attention
(Giannoulis & Wilde 2021).
Recent work in digital discourse further highlights the centrality of
identity construction (Bös et al. 2018), engagement, and multimodality
(Thurlow et al. 2020; Moschini & Sindoni 2022; Zappavigna & Logi
2024). At the same time, scholars emphasize the need for deeper study
of user creativity (Vásquez 2019), manifested in the innovative
production of memes, stickers, emojis, syntactic transformations, and
other multimodal artefacts. Chovanec and Vásquez (2025) too argue that
such creativity serves diverse socio-pragmatic purposes—from bonding
and playfulness to ridicule, mockery, and in-/out-group
boundary-making, as well as coded communication and political
polarization.
Crucially, the digital world is undergoing a rapid shift toward hybrid
human–AI interaction. Artificial intelligence, once a reactive
interlocutor (e.g., chatbots), is now becoming a creative participant
capable of generating multimodal content. This transition introduces
new contrasts—human vs. AI multimodal discourse—that will reshape
long-standing analytical categories such as speaker intention,
communicative accountability, negotiation of meaning, metapragmatic
awareness, cooperation, and (im)politeness. Understanding MEGS within
these emerging environments is essential for capturing how digital
communication is transforming at structural, social, and epistemic
levels.
This Special Issue aims to bring together research that illuminates
how image-based digital resources—created by humans, machines, or
collaboratively—are used to navigate, reinforce, or disrupt binary
structures across diverse global contexts.
Topics of Interest
Submissions from all methodological traditions are welcome. Topics may
include, but are not limited to:
1. Binary Subversion and Sociopolitical Expression
 - MEGS as tools for resisting gendered, political, or cultural
binaries
 - Visual dissent in contexts with limited freedom of expression
2. User Creativity and Socio-Pragmatic Functions
 - Innovation in meme, sticker, emoji, and GIF production and
circulation
 - Playfulness, bonding, mockery, exclusion, and boundary-work
3. Identity, Culture, and Relational Work
 - MEGS in discursive identity construction
 - Cultural mapping and culturally embedded multimodal practices
4. MEGS During Major Social Events
 - Civic participation, pandemic communication, or responses to daily
occurrences
5. Human–AI Multimodal Discourse
 - Comparative analyses of human-generated and AI-generated MEGS
 - Hybrid creativity and shifting notions of authorship, intention,
and accountability
6. Methodological and Analytical Innovations
 - Multimodal, sociolinguistic, ethnographic, discourse analytic, or
computational approaches to MEGS
 - Ethical and interpretive challenges in studying AI-mediated
multimodal content
Contributions focusing on underexamined cultural and linguistic
contexts are specially encouraged.
Submission Instructions
Abstract submissions
 - Deadline: December 15, 2025
 - Length: 300–500 words (excluding references)
 - The abstract must include research question, data, methodology, and
contribution to the Special Issue theme.
 - Notification of acceptance/rejection Deadline: December 30, 2025.
 - Send abstracts to Dr. Najma Al Zidjaly: najmaz at gmail.com
Full paper submissions (after abstract acceptance)
 - Deadline: April 30, 2026
 - Length: 6,000–8,000 words (including references)
 - Manuscripts must conform to the Multimodal Communication author
guidelines.
 - All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review.
 - Deadline for revised submissions: August 15, 2026.
 - Date of Publication: September 2026.
Note: This Special Issue seeks to advance global scholarship on
multimodal creativity, binary subversion, and the new terrain of
human–AI digital discourse. We warmly invite researchers working on
memes, emojis, GIFs, stickers, and other visual artefacts to join us
in mapping these emerging dynamics.
For questions or early inquiries, please contact the Guest Editor at
najmaz at gmail.com.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3617
----------------------------------------------------------